Tony's Angels
by AlmeidaFluff
Summary: Chapter 4. Continuation of LFD, with T&M now married with children. Second half of the surprise is revealed. Thanks in advance for your review!
1. Chapter 1

**TONY'S ANGELS: **_Chapter One_

"Daddy, did you, umm… umm, did you gets shot, Daddy?" his three-year-old glanced up from her dolls and inquired, as she did most evenings when he returned home from work.

"Not today, baby," he mindlessly answered, preoccupied with studying the misty LCD panel on the pink toy palm pilot he'd picked up from the floor beside her.

"Michelle!" he called out loudly enough for his voice to carry across the room, through the door, up the hallway, past the family room and into the kitchen. "Did this thing get left out in the rain?"

He paused and tilted his head, awaiting her standardized "What thing?" response, which never eventuated.

"Where's your mother?" he looked down and asked his female mirror image.

"_Michelle!"_ the dainty three-year-old turned her short-cropped, curly haired head and helpfully hollered out in the same direction and approximate volume, despite the strain it put on her otherwise tiny, quiet voice.

He cocked his head to the side and frowned in disapproval.

"Only I can call her that… remember?" he gently reminded her.

Riley looked up with a wounded expression before returning her attention to the task of gouging the eye out of Barbie's little sister, Skipper, whose hair had also seen better days.

Before he could call out to Michelle again, his question was answered by the large plastic drinking glass he noticed sitting off to Riley's side, filled with some kind of red Kool-Aid-type substance in which a naked Barbie stood submerged up to her neck. Inspecting the pink palm pilot a little closer this time, he noticed a stickiness clinging to the casing and safely put two and two together.

Frowning down at Riley again, he cleared his throat to both summon her attention and express his disapproval, but she kept her head tilted downward, eyes glued to her dolls, pretending not to notice. He decided not to pursue the matter any further at the moment, partially because he was tired and hungry and not in the mood, but mostly because he couldn't bear it when she did that hurt-feelings thing with her eyes.

"Where you good for your mother?" he asked as a matter of routine.

"Yeth," Riley delivered her pat answer, without even giving it thought.

"What happened today? Anything?" he probed, dropping himself into a decadently cushy wing chair and wearily rubbing his eyes, simultaneously motioning his First Lieutenant front-and-center, from whom he sought a briefing every evening around this same time, knowing her intel to be solidly reliable, consistently well-sourced, and usually eye-witnessed.

"Mommy made cookies," she replied in her soft, tiny voice, dutifully and delicately laying the one-eyed Skipper down and rising to her feet to take up her usual position between her father's knees, which as good fortune would have it, stood approximately the same height as the monkey bars at the park.

"Cookies, huh," he replied, sitting back and unbuttoning his cuffs, wondering why he didn't smell smoke in that case.

"Ninety-six cookies," Riley elaborated with an arm positioned on each of his thighs, providing the leverage she needed to pick her feet off the floor, bend her legs at the knees, and dangle.

"What? ... Ninety…?" he asked, barely able to discern her soft words, particularly whenever she spoke them with her head down.

"Six," she added, to be precise.

"Your mother baked six cookies?" he asked, confused.

"Plus ninety," Riley responded.

Forget it, he thought to himself, the conversation having already degenerated into an Abbott & Costello routine before it had even barely begun.

"And how many of them did you manage to swipe?" he challenged her, unable to stifle a grin as he zeroed in on the crusted chocolate encircling her mouth like some kind of Goth lip liner.

Riley stared at him as though she had no idea of what he could possibly be talking about, despite the additional trace evidence she was unknowingly transferring, as they spoke, from her hands onto his pants legs.

"C'mere," he said, sitting up again as she obligingly lowered her feet to the floor and, knowing the drill, jutted her face out to be cleaned.

"Daddy?" she asked as he worked his tongue-moistened thumb around the pudgy pockets on either side of her mouth, trying her best to remain still despite the overwhelming urge to hop up and down on one foot. "Daddy?" she repeated.

"What, baby," he mumbled, hunching in to frisk her for the chocolate chips he intuitively knew she had squirreled away on her person somewhere, just as he had always done at her age, and occasionally still did.

"Daddy, umm... does... does Mommy's baby, umm... Does the, umm... Does the baby, umm..."

"Take your time," he reminded her, finding inch-deep crumbs in both front pockets of her calf-length dress, but ultimately coming up with nothing in the way of whole chocolate chips.

"Daddy, does the baby eat, umm... wiss a fork, Daddy?"

"Stand still," he mumbled, brushing the equivalent of an entire cookie from between the fingers and palms of both hands, then clearing out the front of the catchall lace framing the neck of her pink denim dress. "What do ya mean, a fork?" he asked, scrunching his eyes into a confused squint once her question had finally registered.

"Does the baby eats... _wiss a fork?"_ Riley repeated about ten times louder, as though he were deaf or slow, either condition of which was easily remedied, she figured, by repeating the question at ear-splitting decibels.

"A fork?" he stared, halting his search momentarily to silently question her sanity. "How would a fork get in there?"

She stared back for a moment and shrugged, her mind having already moved on to other things, like why it never occurred to a man so smart as her father to check the cuffs of her socks, which is where she always stashed whatever chocolate she had managed to pilfer.

"Where's your sisters?" he sat back and asked, satisfied that whatever she'd swiped had since been consumed.

Riley responded with a wounded-looking upward turn of her huge brown eyes in the direction of the bedroom she shared with her three older siblings.

"Tell them I said to let you play," he authoritatively instructed, watching her gleefully scramble to gather the cyclopsed Skipper and Kool-Aid tinged Barbie.

The mystery of Michelle's disappearance unraveled as she materialized at the head of the stairs and began her descent.

"What did they do?" he grimaced, leaping up to meet her midway on the staircase, already annoyed that whatever it was, it had forced her to climb the stairs, which he'd specifically told her he didn't want her doing unless it was absolutely necessary.

"Nothing, honey," she smiled, pausing to exchange a brief kiss as Riley muscled her way past them, yelling at the top of her lungs that Daddy said they had to let her play, adding her own "or else" to ensure a ringside seat for herself. "I just wanted to get them started on learning to fold their own clothes and putting them…"

"You carried laundry up the stairs?" he said in disbelief. "What the hell are ya doing that for? Didn't I say that I'd take care of the heavy lifting when I—"

"Little girls' t-shirts and socks aren't heavy, dear," she gently interrupted, empathetic to the suffocating, overbearing, over-protectiveness he was prone to exhibiting around the seventh month of any given pregnancy, and why, but making a conscious decision not to allow her mind to travel there at the moment. "Besides, climbing the stairs is good exercise," she presented the positive side of the argument. "Remember what Dr. Diez said about getting more exercise?"

"Diez is… Diez is _not_ the head of this household," he fumed, willing to give the obstetrician a significant voice in this pregnancy, but not about to surrender the final word, which as far as he could figure, rightfully belonged to himself; not some doctor they'd only known for a scant seven years. "You just stay off those stairs," he directly ordered, blurring the line between husband and boss as he'd always done from their first date forward.

"I will, dear," she calmly agreed, with no intention of keeping her word, waddling off in the direction of the kitchen with him trailing tight on her heels.

She'd long since given up trying to reason with him beyond the seven-month milestone. It was in the seventh month that they'd tragically lost their first baby, which had devastated him just as deeply as her. His excessive protectiveness every pregnancy thereafter, she knew, was simply his way of dealing with old wounds and fresh fears, and generally getting himself through the final few months with his brains intact.

Once safely out of their three-year-old's eyeshot, she soothed his over-concern with a steamy, extended kiss, silently complimenting herself for her ability to still render him breathless, even with her round, distended midsection separating them by what felt like the length of a football field. Not five minutes later, however, he was back to fretting all over again; not with respect to their unborn this time, but the disturbing "fork" exchange he'd just had with their youngest.

"Is that normal?" he asked, sporting the slightly pained, mildly alarmed expression she knew so well.

"It's fine, dear," she calmly reassured him, stopping everything she was doing to rest a gentle hand against his arm, knowing his tendency to stress over things that she, herself, wouldn't even think to bat an eye about.

"Asking if an unborn fetus eats with a fork is fine?" he pressed, in no way convinced that Riley's question was anywhere remotely within even the broadest definition of "fine." "Who even thinks of something like that?"

"She didn't know," Michelle soothed him. "That's why she was asking you."

She watched the information process itself behind his lost gaze, giving his arm another analgesic squeeze.

"Okay?" she checked, beginning to worry herself, now, about the lineup of pots on the stove that needed stirring. "She was just thinking about how—"

"But how could the baby even get its hands on one?" he reviewed the logic of it all again.

"She wasn't thinking that far ahead," Michelle explained. "She was just thinking about how everyone at the table eats with a fork, and was wondering if the baby—"

"But that's my point," he cut in, his pained eyes conveying his increasing concern. "Did she think ya swallowed one? I mean... how else could the baby even get hold of a fork?"

He stared at her blankly.

"She wasn't thinking about that part, dear," Michelle repeated, smoothing her hand over his arm. "She's only three, remember."

"Uh-huh," he said halfheartedly, his eyes still flickering with mild alarm, but trusting Michelle implicitly when it came to assessing and understanding what the girls were thinking or saying, or trying to say, and what the hell it all meant, even though, technically, it was he who had come into parenthood with the overload of practical experience, having spent so much time with Olivia through the formative years. Oddly, however, once he had become an actual father himself, his recollection of all those years had somehow completely vanished, replaced by a mind-numbing sense of terror that always partially paralyzed him every time he pondered the awesome responsibility of molding the minds of such tiny, innocent creatures into functioning, contributing members of society someday.

"It's a perfectly reasonable question for that age," Michelle consoled him. "Okay?"

"Uh-huh," he repeated, still not entirely convinced, but having no choice but to defer to her judgment.

Following her over to the stove, he assumed his favorite kitchen position, wrapping his arms around her middle and watching over her shoulder as she checked on another one of the dull-as-hell culinary creations her instructor had bestowed upon the class that week, which looked and smelled a little like spaghetti sauce, though he couldn't be sure.

"Those recipes they give ya are pretty bland, honey," he reminded her, temporarily releasing an arm to add a few dashes, shakes, and handfuls of this and that before relinquishing control to her again. "Ya gotta remember to always throw in more than what it says," he encouraged her for the millionth time since signing her up for cooking classes years ago, after she'd accidentally burnt two kitchens to the ground in their first year of marriage alone.

He crossed over to the refrigerator and dug through the one-percents and two-percents and lactose-frees, finally locating the container that bore the skull and crossbones he'd magic-markered over the picture of the cow.

"I'm supposed to follow the measurements exactly," she said with a noticeable element of nervousness in her voice.

"Since when did you start following orders," he grinned on the outside, though inwardly nursing a pang of jealousy over how strictly she always adhered to her cooking instructor's directives as opposed to his own.

She winced for a moment, pausing to rub the small of her back where a kink always seemed to set in around this same time everyday.

"What? What's wrong," he instantly demanded to know.

"Not a thing. Just the usual aches and pains," she calmly stated, hoping to nip his overreaction in the bud, though knowing better than to even try.

"Uh-huh," he was sure, silently putting himself on yellow alert, prepared to ratchet up to orange at a nanosecond's notice. "Did ya lie down today?"

"Of course," she replied, only half-lying.

"Yeah? What time?" he pop-quizzed her.

"Somewhere in between the fifteenth and sixteenth time you called today, dear," she responded with the patience of a saint, silently calculating the sum total of her respite at somewhere in the neighborhood of ten to twelve minutes, the rest of the hour having been devoted to answering his pop-phone calls.

"Uh-huh," he grumbled, resuming his position behind her and resting his cheek alongside hers, taking in the sweet, creamy scent of her skin: his favorite perfume. "So, uhh... did you, umm... y'know…"

She waited, knowing exactly what he was about to ask.

"Did I what," she gently prompted him.

"Y'know... feel anything... y'know... different today?"

"Honey," she gently sighed, "I thought you weren't going to drive yourself crazy about that anymore... hmm?" she reminded him.

"I'm not. I'm just asking..." he kissed her ear, smoothing his hands lightly around her middle and intermittently nudging himself against her as if performing some sacred ritual demanded of him by the testosterone overlords if he wanted them to grant his request for a manchild this time around. "It's just that... y'know... if you were feeling anything different, you could tell me. I mean, I don't want ya thinking that I'm not interested in hearing about it."

"Are you sure you don't want to just call Dr. Diez and ask him to tell you the sex of the baby?" she suggested for the thousandth time over the course of the past seven months.

"No," he stood his ground firmly, holding true to his belief, from the first pregnancy forward, that the sex of the baby should be a surprise; that finding out at the moment of birth was half the thrill of having a kid.

"Well, then... if you don't want to know, how come you're asking if I felt anything different… hmm?" she breezily chided him.

He didn't really have a good answer for that.

"Honey," she continued, "you know that no matter which way I answer, you're just gonna get yourself all worked up."

"No, I won't," he promised her in a low whine against her ear, continuing to softly nudge against her, hoping the testosterone gods would count it as extra credit. "C'mon, just tell me... Did ya—?"

Michelle closed her eyes and thought for a moment.

"No," she said quietly. _"But that doesn't mean it's another girl,"_ she quickly added before he could begin reeling in disappointment. "Those are all old wives' tales. There isn't one iota of scientific evidence supporting any of those theories."

"Geeziz," he reeled anyway, trying to quickly recoup before giving his abject horror away, albeit a little too late for that. It didn't matter anyhow, since Michelle could always see right through his wholly transparent, pathetically executed calm-cool-and-collected facades.

It wasn't that he'd ever had a moment's regret that his children had all turned out to be girls. He had never felt even a minim of disappointment from the second each had been put in his arms. He adored his girls. He would kill for his girls. He would give his life in the blink of an eye. He would never want to turn any of them into a boy, either; not even if it were possible; not even his First Lieutenant, Riley. It's just that everywhere he turned, he was assaulted by pink; every time he sat down, it was on top of a Barbie doll; every time he threw a ball, someone would invariably scream, or burst into tears, or both, because he had thrown it too fast. And even when he threw it as slow as the law of physics allowed, they still never caught it, always taking the safer route of allowing it to roll to a complete halt before daintily picking it up and throwing it back to him like a girl.

Even the dog was a girl. It caught Frisbees like a girl and wore a pink collar.

All he was asking was to share the house with just one other male — just one — just to break up all the lace and ruffles and hair bows and bunnies with a little dirt and grime and blue; to sit down, just once, on G.I. Joe instead of Ken, whom he despised; to throw a ball with regulation red stitching, not pink or glittery gold, and to watch it actually make contact with a mitt. Was this asking too much of the testosterone gods?

In two of the longest upcoming months of his life, he would have his answer. No problem; he could wait it out. Tony Almeida was a patient man, with unshakable faith and trust in the overlords, who'd definitely be coming through for him this time.


	2. Chapter 2

**TONY'S ANGELS:** _Chapter Two_

"What are _you_ looking at?" he growled down at his three-pack of identical five-year-olds on the floor, with Riley situated smack in the middle of their Barbie metropolis of dream houses, beachfront getaways, recording studios, clothing trunks, sportscars, and teeny plastic high-heeled shoes as far as the eye could see.

"_You,_ pork chop head!" Nalda squealed, collapsing in a heap of laughter over her own uproarious humor, her sisters quick to join in the hilarity, one more incapacitated with sidesplitting laughter than the other in response to their father's sneering reaction.

"Don't make me shoot you," he facetiously gave them fair warning in a low, stern voice, fishing under Riley's bed pillow and coming up a with a frilly white nightgown adorned with graphics of the Eiffel Tower and grinning rabbits in Parisian berets.

"You're not allowed! Mommy said!" Georgia leapt to her knees and promptly made legal mincemeat of his threat.

"Yeah, well..." he allowed his voice to trail off, as if the legalities were still debatable until such time as Congress rendered a formal vote on the matter. "Which one of you is the three-year-old," he pretended to forget.

"Me, Daddy!" Riley shrieked the way three-year-olds always do, wholly incapable of containing their massive excitement upon realizing that they actually know the answer to something.

"Over here, woman," he muttered, catching her tiny body as she hurled it at him. "Did you and Mrs. Sanchez get everything on the list today?" he asked, standing her on the bed and fumbling to drag her dress over her head without taking her head along with it.

"Yeth," Riley said, quickly glancing at her sisters to see how many were seething with jealousy, since she was the only one Mrs. Sanchez ever took along to the supermarket. Little did she know it was only to give Michelle some uninterrupted time to catalogue the previous day's field status reports: an insignificant, unchallenging, unrewarding level-one task, but which she insisted upon doing anyway, just to keep a hand in things while out on leave.

"Umm… Daddy, can I be, umm… Daddy?… Umm, can I be a… umm…"

"Take your time, baby," he said in a soft voice, trying to figure out whether the three little buttons indicated the front or the back of the nightgown.

"She wants to be a hamburger maker when she grows up," Nalda, the pack leader, gazed up from the floor and translated.

"A what?" he asked over his shoulder, scrunching his face in confusion.

"At the drive-thru, Daddy. She likes the hat that the lady wears," Georgia, the pack's communications liaison, clarified.

He turned back to Riley, who stood anxiously awaiting his decision with bated breath.

"No," he said, immediately wincing from the subsequent stab of pain to his heart as her huge, expressive eyes instantly welled up with bitter disappointment, her lips falling into a pout that never failed to work him over, like Kryptonite on Superman. "I'll get ya a hat, but you're not working in some hamburger joint, y'hear? Your grandmother would have a stroke…"

"I'm gonna be an agent, like Mommy," Nalda proudly announced, her two identical sisters instantly agreeing to become agents, as well.

"No, you're not," he grumbled under his breath.

"But Mommy said we can be anything we want!" Nalda immediately flew into a high-pitched whine, chillingly similar in tone and tenor to his own.

"Yeah, well… your mother's been known to be wrong every decade or so," he replied, dragging Riley's arms through the billowy sleeves, then hunching in to glare at the tiny pink rabbit buttons on the nightgown's bib, wondering why the hell manufacturers made them so infinitesimally small when they knew that the parent would be doing the buttoning, not the kid.

"You never let us do _anything,"_ Nalda instantly broke into tears, leaping up from the floor and throwing herself facedown on the adjourning twin bed.

"I let ya go to the hardware store with me last Saturday, didn't I?" he casually challenged her veracity.

"You made us go!" Georgia leapt to her feet and argued in her sister's defense, sniffling back tears of solidarity as she threw herself onto the bed in equally high-drama mode.

He snickered to himself. He had taken them along, as he always did any chance he could get, to allow Michelle some much needed alone-time while Riley was down for her nap. But he'd also done it for himself, privately loving and seizing any opportunity to show them off to the world. They were small for their age, dainty and fragile, and utterly drop-dead beautiful, with soft little voices, soulful Bambi eyes, porcelain skin, and strawberry ringlets, just like the picture he kept in his wallet of Michelle when she was around their age.

Knowing the pride and enjoyment he got from parading them around town, Michelle would always put them in one of the sets of identical sundresses that his Mom was forever purchasing by the boatload, replete with fully coordinated head-to-toe accoutrements, from matching sunhats with flowy streamers to anklets trimmed in tatted lace.

Women on the street never failed to stop and gush at the sight of them holding each other's hands as they trailed along behind him, in single file, like a row ducklings. Guys in the hardware store invariably stepped aside in awe, bowing to his omnipotent baby-producing powers. Little did they know — nor did he ever plan to reveal — that his triplets were actually the product of fertility drugs. Following the loss of their first baby, Michelle had turned to drug therapy, having successfully convinced herself that it wasn't in the cards for her to ever conceive again after they'd tried for months on end, to no avail.

Since both of them had been deemed physically healthy and perfectly able, Tony had been certain at the time that psychosomatics was at the heart of the problem: vestiges of the crippling guilt Michelle had suffered when an on-the-spot, snap decision she'd made had resulted in saving the lives of two field agents, but at the tragic expense of their unborn child.

Tony, though wary and reluctant, had ultimately agreed to go along with the fertility drug concept, but only after Dr. Diez had assured him, hand-to-God, that the chance of multiple births resulting from the particular drug Michelle would be taking was surprisingly lower than Tony had thought: only about twelve percent over and above the population's normal occurrence of multiples.

Nine months later he was the father of triplets, in stark contrast to Diez's professional crackerjack prediction and reassuring assertions; plus, not just any ol' run-of-the-mill triplets, but identical ones, which was such a rarity that a gaggle of local reporters had hounded him for a solid week before finally moving on to cover the training regimen of the 300something-pound guy who'd agreed to represent the community in Coney Island's historic hotdog-eating contest that year.

"You're not gonna be agents and that's final," he calmly, but sternly, informed them, the mere thought of their lives in danger enough to make him physically ill. "I already told ya, you're gonna be nuns…"

"But I don't _wanna_ be a nun!" Nalda wailed into her flowery comforter.

"You're all gonna be nuns, so get used to it," he laid down the law in a slightly firmer voice, damned if some hormone-crazed Gerald-esque freak was ever going to lay paws on any one of them; at least not as long as he still had a breath of life in him, and a handgun permit.

"Does I have to be, umm… Daddy, does I have to be a… umm…?" Riley sputtered with a wide-eyed, worried expression, bearing such a striking resemblance to himself sometimes that he could see why Michelle had always referred to her as his female clone from the first second she'd laid eyes on her.

"'_Do_ I,'" he gently mumbled a correction. "'_Do_ I have to be'…"

"Do I?" she asked again with deepening concern, having no idea what nuns did for a living, but hoping they got to do it in a hat.

"You're gonna be a calculus theorist," he informed her, quickly adding "That's a nun who's good with numbers, like you," upon noticing a wave of confusion wash across her face.

Her lower lip began to quiver as she peered over at her three sniffling sisters, whose weeping suggested that nunhood might not be half the fun that her father was making it out to be.

"Did I mention that nuns can fly?" he quickly injected, hoping to inspire a little enthusiasm for their future vocation. "Didn't anybody watch that DVD I went to the trouble of ordering for ya?"

"Mommy said no, 'cause it's too sexy," Georgia, the pack's communications liaison, pouted.

"The Flying Nun?" he double-checked in disbelief, glancing over his shoulder and staring at her like she had two heads, trying to imagine what could possibly be considered sexy — much less too sexy — about a nun in a head-to-toe habit with only two hands and a face exposed. But he decided to ask Michelle about it later, figuring it safer than potentially becoming ensnared in a discussion about sex, of all things, with four sets of innocent, angelic eyes fixed upon him, awaiting answers to an inevitable nonstop barrage of harrowing follow-up questions. He could just see it.

"But nuns can't go ondates!" Nalda continued to sob, presently only midway through her _Ken: What a Doll!_ book, but with her heart already set on finding her ultimate dream date, hopefully in kindergarten where she and her sisters were headed in only a matter of weeks.

"There's not gonna be any dating," he grumbled, giving up on the buttons and fishing through the top drawer of Riley's nightstand in search of a duck-like diaper pin he'd stabbed himself with about a week ago.

"Mommy said we can go on dates when we get as old as Barbie," Georgia was quick to mention, which was fine as far as he was concerned, considering Barbie was in her late-40somethings, unbeknownst to the brooding brood.

"There'll be no dating while I'm still alive. Subject closed," he formally ended the conversation, a disturbing vision suddenly crossing his mind of the three of them in their teens, murdering him in his sleep some night.

"I'm telling Mommy!" Georgia, who also moonlighted as the pack's informant, declared on her way to the door.

"No, you're getting changed… all of ya," he ordered over his shoulder, laying Riley down on the bed to remove her shoes and socks, pausing to frown at the half-dozen partially melted chocolate chips that fell from the cuffs of her socks, which he promptly disposed of by shoving into his mouth. "Hurry it up, too. I'm hungry…" he added, knowing there wasn't a chance in hell he was going to be fed until the entire tribe was seated at the table, despite the girls having already had dinner two hours ago. But Michelle always gave them some sort of dessert-type thing while the two of them had dinner together, a nightly ritual that she was adamant about adhering to after having read about the healthy psychological affects of a daily sit-down gathering and discussion, with all family members in attendance. It was also an excellent way of ensuring that he got himself home no later than 7:00, knowing from firsthand experience, herself, how easy it was to slip into a pattern of continuously staying late at the office, catching up on work that would always somehow multiply itself by the following morning.

"But it's still early!" Nalda complained, rising to her feet anyway, knowing the limits to which she could push him before finding herself in actual trouble.

Although pouting, sniffling, and threatening to run away and live in Malibu with Barbie and Ken, the gruesome threesome nevertheless obediently dragged themselves across the room and into their bathroom, one of them — Nalda, no doubt — shutting the door with a little too much force for the old man's liking.

"Hey!" he turned his head and sternly called out.

"Sorry, Daddy," Laura, the pack's public relations spokesperson, creaked the door open and apologized in that same soft, delicate voice they all shared.

"That's better," he firmly stated, chuckling to himself as a hushed hale of squealy giggles immediately emanated from behind the door the second Laura carefully re-closed it.

"Don't take forever in there," he called out a warning.

"Don't take _forever,"_ Riley promptly backed him up, just as loudly and dictatorially.

He grinned at her, approvingly. She grinned back, leaning in to rub noses with him, the way the Eskimos did in the library book they had read the other night.

"Were you good for your mother today?" he asked her again, forgetting he had already covered that ground.

"Yeth," she nodded, vigorously rotating her legs, as if running a hundred miles per hour, as he lifted her up from the bed, then sat himself down with her on his lap.

"Where are those rabbit things your grandmother sent ya," he muttered, twisting his body into an uncomfortable sideways lean to fish around beneath the dust ruffle for the nightgown's matching slippers. Coming up empty, he placed Riley on her feet and told her to look under the bed, grinning as three-quarters of her tiny body disappeared beneath the dust ruffle, reemerging a moment later with two slippers in hand and waves of static-electrified hair hovering above her dark curls.

"I don't know what I'd do without you, woman," he said, replacing her on his lap and proceeding to the final slippers-putting-on stage of production.

"Who's the handsomest man on the block?" he quizzed her, cradling her in the crook of his arm, like a bag of groceries, as he crossed over to the girls' bathroom door.

"_Yooooouuuu_ are, Daddy," Riley cooed out a soft, musical giggle, patting his chest as if to ease him of an obvious insecurity he had about his looks.

"You're so smart," he grinned like a schoolboy in love, rapping a knuckle against the bathroom door. "Open up," he called through the thick wood.

"We can't… We're naked," Nalda announced, followed by another triplicate gale of hand-muffled giggles and squeals.

"No, you're not. Open up," he repeated, hard-pressed to suppress a grin, thinking of all the countless times they'd pulled that excuse on him since reaching the age of modesty. It was the only form of true, raw power they held over him — the ability to decide whether they wished to allow him entry into a room — never once disheartened or deterred that their relentless attempts to abuse their power consistently blew up in their faces, just as this one was about to do.

"Y'want that lock permanently removed?" he bit his lip to keep from chuckling, having to wait no more than a beat before the door came flying open. "Get her washed up for dinner," he said, depositing Riley onto her feet and pushing her sleeves up to her elbows. "Laura?" he said, careful not to make eye contact with any of them, since he couldn't tell one triplet from another just by looking at them, and never wanted them to know it.

"Yes, Daddy?" Laura answered, taking the bait and stepping forward.

"I don't want her showing up at the table wringing wet again, y'hear? You're in charge," he stated, immediately identifying which of the two remaining triplets was Nalda from the deep frown that set into her brow, watching her sister excitedly assume the lead position, taking Riley by the hand and dutifully guiding her into the fold.

"I only have one kiss left, so who wants it," he inquired. "You…" he said, pointing to Nalda, who slowly and reluctantly dragged herself over to him, radiating all the enthusiasm of Marie Antoinette on her way to the gallows.

"C'mere," he said, lifting her effortlessly up from the floor and laying a lingering kiss against her milky, Michelle-like cheek.

"I want to be in charge," Nalda sulked, speaking in a low, wounded voice so nobody else but he could hear.

"I know, but it's Laura's turn. Everybody gets a turn to be the leader, remember?" he replied in an equally low, one-on-one tone while the others busied themselves with positioning Riley atop the step-stool in front of the sink. "No 'followers' in this family… remember?"

Nalda nodded halfheartedly, her head slowly sinking and coming to rest against his shoulder.

The rocking sensation of her father's body shifting slowly back and forth provided the comfort she needed in her moment of dejection. Fingertips rubbing gently and rhythmically against her spine soothed her to her soul. Through the ear pressed against his shoulder, she listened to the hollow, muffled sound of his words echoing inside his body, instructing her sisters to finish up and get themselves to the table in no more than ten minutes. From the way his body then shifted slightly forward, coupled with the sudden absence of his fingertips, she could tell he was holding his wrist out to Georgia now, about to assign her the awesome responsibility and esteemed privilege of keeping track of the time with his watch.

Nalda exhaled a deep sigh of resignation, patiently waiting for her soothing backrub to resume. She had wanted to be the one assigned to hold and safeguard the sacred timepiece.

"Daddy?" she whined softly, lifting her head and moving in close to his ear. "What am I in charge of?" she pouted low and one-on-one.

"You're in charge of your mother's secret," he said, just loudly enough to ensure that her sisters overheard.

Nalda's eyes instantly flashed with intense curiosity, like the switch of a certain inherited inner snoop mechanism had just been thrown.

"This is classified intel, lady. Your ears only, understood?" he double-checked before returning his voice to a lower, subject-appropriate clandestine level.

Her curls bounced around her head as she nodded with a newfound surge of excitement and enthusiasm, tightening her embrace around his neck and offering her ear to him, feeling about ready to faint from the sheer suspense of it all.

A loud gasp escaped her lungs and her eyes illuminated as he whispered the reason their mother wanted them in their nightgowns earlier than usual this evening.

"Not a word, y'hear?" he concluded with a full-voiced reminder, sealing the pact with a signatory peck against her cheek before lowering her featherweight body to the floor.

He grinned at the sight of the tiny nightgown billowing around her petite frame as she gracefully strutted up to the pack, her spirit rejuvenated, leadership position reinstated, and powerbase fully recharged and humming, like a four-turbo Bugatti Veyron at a leisurely cruise speed of 235.

"Ten minutes," he firmly reminded them on his way out the door, chuckling under his breath as her sisters clamored around her now, negotiating anything they had of value, including his wristwatch and Riley, in exchange for just one tiny little hint.


	3. Chapter 3

**TONY'S ANGELS: **_Chapter Three_

"What's this business about The Flying Nun being too sexy?" were the first words out of his mouth when he rejoined Michelle in the kitchen.

"Not the nun, honey. That playboy, whatzhizname... who always flirted with her," she responded.

"What playboy?"

"The millionaire playboy. You know, the… the sexy Latino playboy. I'd like to keep them as innocent and free of all that stuff for as long as we can."

"Uhh… weren't those hopes pretty much dashed when Santa and Mommy got caught under the Christmas…"

"Yes, yes, please," she scowled, needing no reminder. "I told them it was a criminal impersonating Santa and that he was resisting arrest... Be sure to remember that."

"I was half-naked, honey..."

"Yes, because I was strip-searching you after you'd resisted arrest, okay?... Don't forget that. It's one of Georgia's favorite stories, so be sure to keep the details straight."

"Y'know, that kinda thing only encourages them to wanna become Feds, Michelle," he complained.

"They're not gonna be nuns, dear. I'm sorry… Really, I don't know why you persist in bringing that stuff home for them."

"Oh, they're gonna be nuns, all right… All of them," he firmly and confidently decreed, shaking his head in wholehearted agreement with himself. "Religious holidays are gonna be a big deal around this house someday..."

Michelle closed her eyes and shook her head in her usual amazement.

"Did Olivia end up becoming a nun?" she hated to remind him.

"Yeah, well... I made some mistakes with Olivia, okay? I admit that. I didn't... y'know, involve her early enough," he ruefully lamented. "They didn't have all this stuff on the internet back then, like… Ya can download nun coloring books now, y'know. And paper dolls…"

Michelle wanted to laugh, but was too absorbed in trying to visualize the type of clothing items a book of paper-doll nuns might contain.

"There's these auction sites, too, where ya can find...What the... What the_hell_ are ya...?"

His words evaporated in mid-sentence, his feet suddenly seeming to momentarily freeze in their tracks as he stared at her in wide-eyed, dry-mouthed disbelief.

"Am I talking to myself around here, or what?" he demanded to know, abruptly changing topics and tone as he propelled across the room to where she stood, tiptoed, reaching for a stack of bowls inside an overhead shelf. "Didn't I just get through telling ya that _I_ would take care of the heavy lifting?"

"It's four Little Mermaid bowls," she gently pointed out, having no idea what "reaching" and "heaviness" had to do with each other and very much doubting that he did either.

"You were on your toes, Michelle!" he roundly busted her, apparently convinced that toe muscles played a key and critical role in successfully retaining a fetus within the uterine cavity. "Do ya think I'm blind?"

Blind? No. Insane? There was ample evidence within this conversation alone to forego the requisite three signatures legally required to commit someone and throw away the key.

"Don't get yourself all upset, now, honey," she said in an even, soothing tone, waddling over to the open silverware drawer he'd abandoned when he'd made his Olympic-worthy dash across the kitchen. "It's Friday. We have a lovely evening ahead of us..."

"What do you think 'heavy lifting' means, anyway, huh?" he demanded with a frustrated scowl. "I'd love to know what goes on around here when I'm not home..."

"The gardener and pool boy are sworn to secrecy, so don't even bother," she grinned.

"_I_ do the heavy lifting," he reiterated the rules, failing to see the humor in her statement. "Do ya think you could please just _try_ to remember that? Geeziz..."

"I will," she ignored him with a warm smile, counting out the flatware and wondering if there was a weight limitation on how many spoons could be held in the same hand before qualifying as "too heavy" in the mind of a lunatic. "Tell me what finally happened with Hammond today, hmm? Did he ever get back to you?"

"Please… don't make me laugh," he grumbled, still thoroughly annoyed but working to pull himself out of it. "He's been wanting to merge those two departments for years. He's not about to sign off on an increase."

"Still, it never hurts to submit a formal request," she offered an encouraging word, feeling a familiar ache to be back at her station amid the thick of things. "At the very least, you're officially on record in support of shifting some manpower into..."

Her comments were abruptly placed on hold by the jangling of his cell phone. As he dug it out of his back pocket, she could feel her heart sinking at the prospect of his being called into the office, therein sending their long-awaited plans for the evening up in smoke.

"Almeida," he said into the mouthpiece, flashing her a comforting glance before checking his bare wrist, then the clock above the doorway, to see if the graveyard crew had yet to transition into their shift.

Lowering the burners beneath the pots, Michelle checked their levels against the hand-drawn chart he had made for her and taped to the wall above the stove years ago. From the corner of her eye, she anxiously watched his expression slowly morph from a frown into a confused squint, as though trying to either figure out who the caller was, or what was being said. At least that eliminated the likes of Hammond and a number of other work-related contenders, she took heart in safely deducing; he'd have instantly recognized their voices and would be barking, or at the very least, seething, by now.

"Uhh… I thought you agreed not to call me anymore," she heard him say in a low, terse voice, turning his back and taking a couple of safe-distance steps away from her. Michelle's eyebrows instantly leapt upward in reaction to the classic line nervously whispered into the phone by cheating husbands to the cheap, young chickies they kept on the side.

Knowing her marriage to be as solid as granite, she nevertheless gave the knob on her internal need-to-know mechanism a hard turn to the right, ratcheting up to an auditory level that generally only dogs could appreciate. As she busied herself burying the Little Mermaids in strawberries and cream, the eye in the back of her head watched him parking a hand on his hip and shifting his weight from one foot to the other, obviously going out of his way to exercise patience with the caller.

"Yeah, well, just bring it to me," he said, conspicuously efforting to keep his voice at a calm, controlled level. "I told you not to... No, just… Hang up now and just bring it to me... No, right now. Where are ya?" he asked, clawing his forehead for another silent moment, then angling his head in the direction of the doorway as Riley turned the corner and moseyed in with Michelle's cell phone pressed to her ear.

"... but my one, umm... It doesn't work anymore, Daddy," she continued her end of the conversation in a low, soft whine, coming to a halt and looking up at him with wide, innocent eyes.

"Yeah, 'cause ya... Hang up the phone," he scowled, clapping his own cell shut and stuffing it back in his pocket. "That's because ya got it all wet, like ya know you're not supposed to... Hang that up," he firmly repeated himself.

"I don't know how," Riley's tiny voice brooded into the mouthpiece, stalling another precious few seconds before having to see an end put to her foremost favorite pastime: talking on whosever phone she could get her hands on, to whomever answered whichever button she decided to push. Her list of respondents was a long and distinguished one, too, including such notables as the Secretary of State, the Deputy Director of the CIA, and the Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, who'd told her about the new kitten his grandson, Thomas, had just gotten for his birthday; the Director of Homeland Security, who at first had ordered the call traced and a police car dispatched to the house, mistakenly thinking she was in some form of distress, but with whom she'd gone on to hold a number of follow-up conversations, finding him to be a very nice man; Division Deputy Director Brad Hammond, who on the other hand had yelled at her and made her cry; the nice lady, Chloe, who could type and talk to her at the same time, and to whom she could wave if she stood on the lawn precisely at the time the satellite went by; the senior Senator from California, who'd gone to college with a man named Riley, although it was the man's last name, not his first; and her personal favorite, Mr. Fat, who took telephone orders at a Chinese restaurant a few blocks away from her parents' office and could recite, from memory, precisely what each had ordered the last time they'd called in for a delivery.

"You knew how to turn it on with no problem, though, didn't ya?" he stoically challenged, cocking his head to the side and holding his hand out to her.

With lips in full-pout position, and a wounded-eyes expression that Michelle always said was identical to his own, Riley reluctantly stepped forward and relinquished custody of her mother's phone, then turned and marched toward the door with a deep frown, fuming that her fun had been completely destroyed after only her second call of the evening.

"Not so fast, you… C'mere," he summoned her back above the squeals and chatter now echoing from the staircase inside as The Pack made their way down to the dining room. "I want ya to stay away from the phones, y'hear me? They're not toys," he sternly reminded her, putting a stack of linen dinner napkins in her hands to carry to the table for him. "Ya call me if it's an emergency, and that's it," he reiterated the rules for the hundredth time as she turned the corner of the kitchen doorway and stormed away in a huff. "People better start listening to me, or I'm gonna start kicking some tail around here... I mean it," he added for good measure, with enough volume and bravado for the entire household to hear, which immediately raised concern in the dog, who got up and trotted away from a shoe she'd earlier come across in the garage.

Michelle tried hard to contain her laughter in response to his hollow threat, but half of it nevertheless managed to come snorting out of her nose.

That would be the day, she thought to herself: Tony Almeida was wholly incapable of raising a finger to his babies, much less "kicking tail." His only saving grace was the volume of his voice and the convincing manner in which he levied his threats, an art form originally studied at Quantico and perfected in CTU holding rooms. Fortunately for him, it worked beautifully on the girls, always stopping them dead in their tracks whenever he achieved a particular tone and tenor. With the grace of God, his luck would hold out through their teenaged years without their ever catching on that their tough-talking father — the guy with the gun — was nothing but a big, vociferous marshmallow who'd been tightly wrapped around each of their little fingers since the first breath of life they'd ever drawn.

"I mean it, Michelle," he blustered, following her into the dining room, holding a handful of dishes at his side, like file folders. "I'm tired of talking to myself around here…"

"Don't upset yourself, dear," she said, still snickering inside. "Could you carry in those strawberries from the kitchen, please? They have to weigh at least six or seven ounces…"

"Not funny, Michelle," he assured her, making his first of no fewer than five trips back and forth between the kitchen and dining room.

On his last lap around the table, now alive with its usual animated chatter, he filled glasses of milk while continuing to growl out varietal edicts, warnings, and complaints — among them, the size of the phone bill, with commentary on how he ought to own stock in the company, considering the amount of cash he poured into it every month — before finally settling down in front of a steaming heap of spaghetti with his name written all over it. Bless Michelle's heart: she might not know how to cook very well, but she knew how to make it hot.

"When are ya gonna tell us the surprise, Mommy?" Georgia whined from across the table.

Through a long, slow, pre-chowdown sip of his favorite Tuscan wine, he exchanged an eye-lock with Nalda, whom he had no trouble identifying this time, given the beaming, Cheshire-cat smile she sported in knowing silence.

"Later, honey. After we're done," Michelle said, taking a moment to lambaste her husband with her eyes for letting them know that a surprise even existed, therein assuring a dozen more suspense-filled questions and whine-laden pleas before dinner was through.

"What's the baby doing, Mommy?" Nalda wanted to know.

"Exactly what you should be doing right now — eating," Michelle replied.

"Wiss a fork?" Riley asked, her head snapping toward Michelle in dire curiosity, followed by Tony's head snapping at an equal or greater speed, only in alarm.

"No, with a special tube inside that goes right to the baby's tummy... Ask Daddy to draw you a picture later," she suggested, biting her lip to keep from giggling as she felt his eyes burning a hole through her head.

"_Cookies!"_ Laura squealed, the first to lunge forward upon locking eyes on the platter at the center of the table, competing with her sisters to be the first to snatch a handful and crumble them atop the cream-soaked strawberries their father had laid out before each of them.

"Uhhh… I believe you've already had yours," Michelle mentioned to Riley, whose entire body was flat on the table by now — her way of making up for the advantage in arm length that her older sisters had over her.

The three-year-old halted in mid-reach and looked up at her mother, first with surprise and then with the creased, crooked eyebrows of a red-handed thief, caught with her hand in the proverbial cookie jar.

"Huh?" she nonetheless responded in complete innocence, stalling for time while she weighed the chances and likelihood of denying her earlier theft and actually getting away with it. No need to look to her father for help, as she generally would at a time like this; he was the one who had found the chocolate chips in her socks, after all, so the chances were slim that he'd back her in whatever excuse, plea, justification, or denial she might be able to come up with in the next few seconds.

Michelle maintained a fixed frown until Riley slowly withdrew her hand and backed her body off the table. Wasting no time in shimmying down from her chair, she marched toward her father with her head lowered, muttering something under her breath, exhibiting mannerisms so similar to Tony's that Michelle had to consciously corral a burst of laughter.

Silently and without assistance, or invitation, for that matter, Riley mountain-climbed onto her father's lap and positioned herself with her back to him, kneeling on his thighs and planting her elbows squarely on either side of his plate to balance herself.

"I'll have _sketti,"_ she looked up at her mother and announced, intent on putting a positive spin on her negative situation, though sounding more like a departing Jeopardy contestant, none to thrilled to be going home with a lame consolation prize instead of a suitcase stuffed with cash.

As her sisters snickered under their breath at her ill fortune, she picked up her father's salad fork and paused momentarily to blow hard on the steaming heap of pasta before digging in.

The briefest glance at Tony's expression forced Michelle to immediately look away, biting the inside of her cheeks in another gallant endeavor to prevent a blast of laughter from freeing itself.

"Can I, uhh… can I get ya anything with that?" he sarcastically inquired over Riley's shoulder as she stuffed her cheeks in angry silence, cooperatively tilting her chin upward for only a brief moment while he slipped his dinner napkin around her neck and tied it cowboy-style, hoping to spare himself the task of changing her into another nightgown, which would mean having to deal with a whole other set of microscopic buttons.

Resigning himself to sharing dinner, he went in for a quick forkful while Riley was busy sucking a long strand of spaghetti into her mouth, making a slurping noise that sounded like feeding time at the zoo.

"_Mmmmm..._ good _cooooooookies,_ Mommy," Georgia's tiny voice tauntingly cooed in Riley's direction, followed by the predictable triplicate chorus of hand-muffled snickering, successfully pushing the three-year-old's Almeida-Outburst button, genetically gifted to her from her great-grandfather, Pop.

"Quiet,_thupids!"_ she roared, her tiny fist pounding against the table hard enough to make the wine gently rock in her father's glass beside her.

"Hey, none of that," Tony firmly corrected her, eyes flashing inquisitively over at Michelle to get her read on the over-the-top reaction.

"Your choca-holic gene, not mine," she conveyed to him with amused eyes, reminding him of the inherent risk to life and limb associated with denying Riley the substance she needed to feed the monkey on her back.

"You," he said, directing a controlled, though steely, no-nonsense voice at the collective Pack, "What did I tell ya about needling her like that?"

"_Soooooooooorry,_ Riley," they robotically sulked out the mandatory apologies in a jumble of soft, sing-songy voices colliding into each other.

Riley said nothing, angrily refocusing her attention on her second dinner until a fingertip interrupted her, lightly tapping against her shoulder.

Knowing what was expected of her, she cocked her head to the side and thought for a moment before raising her eyes and glaring at her sisters.

"_Thorry!"_ she yelled down the table, just as loudly as before.

It was Tony who struggled to maintain a straight face this time, watching the back of Riley's head promptly descend and her shoulders hunch up, muttering something indiscernible before resuming the task of consuming his dinner.

Her disposition and temperament so often reminded him Pop's. She was like a grouchy old man at times, born with the same short fuse as Pop — and himself, if he wanted to be honest about it — given to muttering under her breath whenever things weren't going her way. Still, little cranky quirks aside, he had always found Riley so much easier to deal with than the triplets, whom had overwhelmed him from the very start just by the sheer number of them all. Complicating matters even further was his wholesale inability, from Day One, to keep track of which was whom. Michelle, who'd never had a moment's difficulty telling them apart, even when their backs were turned to her, had tried to come up with ways to help him easily identify each, including a color-coded clothing system: Nalda, pink; Georgia, green; and Laura, violet. But it turned out to be a complete disaster, since he could never remember which name went with which color.

She then went on to assign them different gemstones, placing a corresponding bracelet on each of their wrists, and depending on the outfit, sometimes their ankles, as well — Nalda, ruby; Georgia, sapphire; and Laura, pearl. But she had to eventually abandon that system all together when he suddenly began calling them by their gemstones, since Ruby, Sapphire and Pearl were all female names as well. He himself then came up with what he thought was the perfect solution — getting rid of the color-code entirely and simply ordering a load of white t-shirts with their names printed large on the front and the back — but Michelle had promptly shot down the idea for reasons he still didn't fully understand.

Riley, on the other hand, was a breeze by comparison: there were no colors or gems to deal with, and only one name; plus, just to ensure that he remembered it, Michelle had suggested that he come up with it himself. So he had named her Riley after his favorite L.A. Laker's coach, Pat Riley, whom he adored. If ever Martians were to invade earth and force all men to marry men and women to marry women, he would marry Pat Riley, he'd explained to Michelle one night, who had needed a moment to wind down from laughing hysterically before asking him why, if that were the case, he didn't just simply go with "Pat," a name that was as much a girl's as a boy's. It had been the first thing he had thought of, too, but had instantly dismissed it, he explained, because it would've reminded him too much of Patricia Perelli, who had made his life miserable in the third grade, making eyes at him all the time, which his buddies never failed to torture him about.

"I don't wanna hear that kinda language coming out of you again. Understood?" he stated over Riley's shoulder in his firmest Dad voice, mournfully watching another spaghetti-twisted forkful leaving his plate.

"Yeth," she brooded in a quiet voice before shoveling it into her heavily sauce-encircled mouth.

Too hungry at this point to continue fork-sparring with her another minute, he hand-signaled the daughter closest to the cookies — whomever she was — to pass one over to him, immediately feeling Michelle's eyes fall upon him, frowning out a reminder that bad behavior shouldn't be rewarded. But he generously bestowed special dispensation upon himself this time, so hungry he could eat his own hand and failing to think of another way to get his dinner back without an ensuing barrage of tears.

"Why don't ya try just asking your mother if you can have another cookie... hmm? Did ya ever think of that? Maybe if ya asked a little more often, instead of just swiping them..."

Riley, in fact, had not thought of that. Her head shot up; her face illuminated; her salad fork hit the side of his plate with a clang. The man was a genius.

"Mommy?" she instantly turned and asked with her softest voice and widest eyes. "Can I has, umm... Mommy, I... Mommy, can I has another, umm... cookie?... _Pleathe?"_ she threw in at the last second, remembering how thrilled her mother always got whenever she, or one of her sisters, would use that word.

"Well..." Michelle said with a contemplative sigh, her heart panging and her face washing over with a visible glow, "since you asked so nicely..."

She pretended to pause and think it over for a moment, leaving Riley dangling in wide-eyed suspense.

"And since you said 'please,' which you know I like to hear..." she continued, "I guess you can have just one more..."

Riley's face immediately reilluminated, snatching the cookie from her father's hand like a junkie going for a loaded crack pipe.

"What do you say?" Tony prompted her with another light tap against her shoulder, wondering if his words had even been heard above the feverish chomping.

"Sank you, Mommy," Riley invested a breath between chews to reply, though glancing up at her father as she did, sincerely grateful to him for having come through for her once again.

"Mommy, can't we just have a _liiiiittle_ hint about the _seeeeeeeecret?"_ Laura led the whine-off this time, compelling Michelle's eyes to once again land with a thud upon her husband.

"Just a little one, Mommy?... _Pleeeease?"_ Georgia begged on the heels of her sister's request.

"You can tell them the first part," Tony took the reins and announced, nodding in Nalda's direction, whose face instantly took on a warm, beaming glow. "Just the first part, though... The TV part," he instructed her.

"Mommy's letting us stay up to watch Aunt Olivia on TV," Nalda breathlessly shrieked, greatly relieved for the opportunity to spill at least half her guts, knowing she would've otherwise burst at the seams if she'd had to hold the entire secret in for even so much as a second longer.


	4. Chapter 4

**TONY'S ANGELS:** _Chapter Four_

Freshly shaven and dressed in his most comfortable jeans, Tony stood hunched over the dishwasher, feeling a familiar kink settling into his back as he waited for the next daughter to step up with the next item to be loaded in.

"This is the one Riley ate bisketti with, Daddy," Georgia said in her soft, tiny voice, always announcing how each item had been used, and by whom, before handing it over to him.

"Thank you," he softly replied, making a mental note to ask Michelle if such announcements were considered normal.

While Georgia got back into line, her clone took possession of a teaspoon handed down to her by Nalda, whose turn it was to wear the apron and rinse each item from atop her perch on the step ladder.

"This one was Mommy's, but she didn't use it," Laura reported, not feeling any particular need to document each item herself, but nonetheless following her sister's lead.

"Thank you," he gently repeated, resisting the temptation to shoo them all out of the room and finish the tedious task twenty times faster himself. But he never had the heart to deprive them of their favorite nightly chore so resigned himself to seeing the ritual through to completion, utilizing the portion of his brain that had yet to go numb on him.

"What the hell is—what the heck is your mother doing up there," he thought aloud, wondering why Michelle was taking so long to get dressed.

"_Daddy said a curse!"_ Nalda squealed with unbridled glee, abruptly dropping the spoon she was rinsing and scrambling down the stepladder.

In a flash, three hands were inside his pocket, battling to be the first to emerge with a quarter.

"Easy, _easy!"_ he ordered, commanding them back a few steps with the point of a finger.

Withdrawing a handful of change, he distributed a quarter into the first two anxiously awaiting palms, and two dimes and nickel into the third.

"_No_, Daddy, a _quarter!"_ Laura whined in a semi-panic, instantly eliminating any doubt as to which triplet he was dealing with. Laura was the most sensitive of the three and always the first to set off the waterworks at the drop of a hat.

Her quivering lip made his stomach clench, the same as it always did whenever Michelle was on the verge of tears. It never ceased to amaze him how similar they all were to her; not just in appearance but in the way they acted like her, too, with each of them seeming to have inherited an entirely different portion of her personality. It was as though it had been carved into thirds and divvied out among them, with Nalda receiving all the fearlessness, forcefulness, and leadership qualities of her mother while Georgia reflected her strategic-thinking and problem-solving side.

And then there was Laura: the walking Michele Sensitivity Center and embodiment of everything soft and sweet and gentle about her. Laura was his sniffler; his snuggler; his softie; the one who desired a little more one-on-one face time with him than the others; the one whom he had always found himself feeling a bit more protective of. Just as her mother had a way of making him feel vital as a man, Laura had always made him feel vital as a Dad. She never had to tell him that he was her hero; he knew by the way she would instantly seek him out whenever she felt the least bit threatened or intimidated.

And, just like her mother, Laura would grow up to become the premiere wedding crier of the three; of this he was certain, evidenced by the stream of tears preparing to plunge from her puffy eyes.

"It's the same thing. Look," he quickly explained, now in a semi-panic himself, scooping her up from the floor as deep, gut-wrenching sobs began to accompany the tears now cascading down her baby cheeks. Pulling a chair away from the table, he seated himself with Laura positioned sidesaddle on his lap. "_Ten_, plus _ten_, plus _five_. See?" he explained, pointing out the value of each coin in her hand, which she held straight out, and open flat, as though someone had crazy-glued radioactive isotopes to her palm.

Her clones looked on with worried, sympathetic gazes, glancing at one another, then down at their own quarter, as if psychically deciding who should make the ultimate sacrifice and offer it to their cheated sister.

"_Riley!"_ he turned his head toward the kitchen door and hollered, cupping his palm over Laura's ear to shield it from his thunderous volume.

He waited until the ensuing patter of feet, interspersed with a few bunny hops, had come to a halt at the head of the stairs.

"_Yeth?" _

"Get a quarter outta of your mother's bag and bring it to me," he shouted, eyeing his most comfortable shirt, already heavily saturated with tears.

"_Who's hurt,"_ Michelle called down the stairs a moment later.

"Everything's fine, honey," he assured her at the top of his voice.

"Everything doesn't _sound_ fine," Michelle called back, with suspicion. "Who's bleeding?"

"It's nothing. Just…nobody, honey. It's just a mathematical misunderstanding."

"A _what?"_

"Finish what you're doing up there, all right?" he called back to her, in frustration, watching helplessly as Laura proceeded to wipe her runny nose against his pocket.

In a flash, Riley rounded the corner in a light sweat, missing a slipper but victoriously holding two quarters over her head.

"What does two dimes and a nickel equal," he quickly quizzed her.

"A quarter," Riley breathlessly answered, handing one over to him and—though technically not entitled because she hadn't been present at the time he had uttered the curse word—keeping the other one for herself.

"See?" he said to Laura, feeling fully vindicated but nevertheless removing the isotopes from her hand and replacing them with the single coin.

Her tears immediately ceased, like someone turning a faucet off. Meltdown averted. Another crisis resolved. It was moments like this when he found himself wishing they were their thirties.

Sighing deeply, he rose to his feet with Laura in his arms, planting a light kiss against her wet cheek before lowering her into The Pack and herding them all toward the stairway. With the patience of even the most decorated of patron saints, he fell into line behind the mad flurry of nightgowns and curls, his stomach tightening again as they competed to beat each other to the top, with Riley fighting the hardest of all for at least a respectable third-place finish.

"_Easy,"_ he ordered, shifting his focus away from them and onto Michelle, who stood at the head of the stairs, silently scanning for blood.

"Do I want to know what you were fined for?" she inquired, once he had joined her.

"Daddy said _h-e-double-hockey-sticks_, Mommy," Georgia immediately snitched, prompting her father to cock his head and glare at her through threatening eyes, though inwardly experiencing a rush of horror at the thought of them possibly inheriting some of Amanda Almeida's traits, too.

"You look pretty," he leaned in and murmured against Michelle's perfume-scented ear, draping his arm around her shoulder as they slowly strolled behind their chattering gaggle, engrossed in now arguing over whose quarter was the largest.

Michelle patted the sweater covering her voluminous middle and chuckled at the notion of anyone finding her pretty in her balloon-like state. But she knew that his compliment was genuine and sincere from the countless times she had caught him gazing at her over the years, throughout her assorted pregnancies, with eyes radiating what could only be defined as pure, unadulterated love.

Once inside their bedroom, he liberated himself of his sticky, damp shirt and handed it off to Michelle, then sprawled out across the bed, awaiting the girls' inevitable scramble to join him.

"Somebody get me a shirt," he murmured mid-way through their mountain-climb up his body, smirking to himself as they instantly reversed course and scrambled down at double the speed, this time squabbling over who should get to deliver it.

"Don't get too comfortable," Michelle warned when the corner of her eye caught him turning onto his side and resting his head against his arm. The familiar sight sent her mind barreling back to the day they had gotten the triplets home from the hospital, and the hours he had laid across the bed, in that very spot, gazing in wonderment at the babies lined up in a row beside him. She smiled warmly, recalling how absorbed he had been in studying their identical features: the tiny half-moons on their fingernails; the delicate rims of their ears; the deep, perfectly defined cleft between their nostrils and lips….He had later told her that none of it had seemed real to him until that moment; how only then had it struck him that they were real, live, actual little miniature humans, wholly dependent on him to shelter and protect them. Michelle had reminded him at the time that she, too, would be participating in the venture, though knew that he hadn't even heard her, having already returned his full attention to the babies by then.

"How come you got all pretty, Mommy?" Georgia off-handedly complimented her, taking possession of the clean white shirt her mother had just passed over to her. But no sooner had she gotten the question out when the doorbell rang.

"_Easy on those stairs!"_ their father hollered out behind them, retrieving the trampled shirt that Georgia had promptly dropped to the floor before bolting from the room with the rest of her sisters. He hated those stairs, especially when they were descending them. One trip on the hem of a nightgown and…

"We're buying a new house," he abruptly announced, leaving Michelle somewhat stunned as he dashed from the room, throwing his shirt on and barking out warnings about opening doors to strangers.

"_Darlings!"_ Amanda Almeida cried out as the door swung open, dropping to one knee in a pose reminiscent of Al Jolson's legendary performance of "Mammy."

"_GrandAmanda!"_ the triplets shrieked in unison, invoking the name the family had come up with after Amanda had decided that the "Grandma" title simply didn't work for someone so youthful and vital as she.

While The Pack clamored around their adoring grandmother, from whose outstretched arms dangled full rows of shopping bags, Riley silently fixed her saucer-sized eyes on her grandfather making his way past his wife in the doorway.

"Look how much they've _grown_, darling," Amanda scolded him, in near tears—the man who had cold-heartedly separated her from her beloved angels for what felt like an eternity now that she had them back in her arms. "I told you they would grow!"

"Children are known to do that, sweetheart," Jim Almeida wryly reminded her, holding his arms out to his approaching son, whose face he kissed before scooping him into his signature bear-like embrace.

"I wasn't sure you were gonna make it alive," Tony chuckled, not in reference to his parents' trip from the airport but the vacation they were just now returning from—a birthday surprise, from his Dad to his Mom, consisting of an extravagant month-long rail trip aboard a private string of rented Pullmans on the world-class Orient Express. And just to make it a birthday gift to beat all, he had not only whisked Amanda off, but with a half-dozen of her closest girlfriends in tow.

"It was all smooth sailing after Budapest," Jim smirked, reiterating his gratitude to his son for having intervened with a call to the consulate after Amanda and her entourage had managed to create a near international incident in a marketplace in—appropriately—the Pest region of Budapest.

"Such ill-mannered merchants," Amanda could be heard tsk-ing from across the room, but her sentiments were instantly drowned out by a sudden hail of record-high squeals as Lou huffed his way through the door, lugging a four-wheeled steamer trunk behind him, which he dropped, with a dull thud, dead-center in the room. A moment later, a treasure-trove of trinkets and baubles, collected from every whistle stop between Paris and Istanbul, was strewn as far as the eye could see.

As Tony poured Scotch for his father and Lou, Jim Almeida made his way through the crowd, cognizant of the tail he had picked up at the door, now following closely behind him.

"I believe we've already met," he casually mentioned, with a perfectly straight face after making himself comfortable his son's favorite cushy, oversized wingchair. "Thanksgiving Day, wasn't it?" he continued, feigning a hazy memory.

Riley stood frozen, as though standing in the presence of the great and almighty Oz, barely able to nod her head in shy affirmation. Jim worked to maintain a straight face, settling in for the delicate task of slowly breaking the ice with her, a ritual they'd always gone through since the day she had could walk and, thus, surveil him.

"You're the one who's good with numbers, if I recall. And gymnastics," he added, charmed by the genuine awe she would always exhibit in the first few moments of their meetings. "Tell me, have you given consideration to entering the Olympics?"

"Yeth," Riley shyly responded after an eternity of silently picking at her fingernails, unsure of how to answer at first, since she'd never heard of the Olympics before.

"Balancing is your forte, if I'm not mistaken," her grandfather continued on in an easy, conversational tone.

Riley shyly bobbed her head, but before she could even get the chance to ask if he'd like to see her hop on one foot, her mother had entered out of nowhere and seated herself in his lap.

"If I were a betting man, I'd say this one was a boy," Jim smiled, gently smoothing his hand across the area of her fitted sweater that had just received a good, hefty kick.

"With a promising future in Soccer," Michelle giggled.

"_Noooo__o, _you_ go!" _Riley abruptly interrupted, bounding forward and tugging hard on her mother's sweater until she had succeeded in getting her to move away, only to find herself standing shyly before her grandfather again, frantically trying to recall where their conversation had left off.

Another painful moment of silence ensued before Amanda Almeida's voice could be heard above the festivities, replying, "Thank you, I'd love a martini, darling," to her son's offer to pour her some coffee.

"I've got it, chief," Jim announced, ready for a refill himself. Slowly rising from his seat, he watched Riley's eyes follow him up until her head was cocked all the way back. "Would you care to join me?" he inquired, smiling down with warm eyes and and extended hand.

Honored, she nervously grasped hold of his pinky and fell into step with his slow, easy gait, oblivious to her parents' chuckling at the sight from across the room.

A few minutes later, even the triplets fell quiet as Riley's bunny-slippered foot made a torturously slow appearance from around the corner. Another few carefully executed steps revealed her hands wrapped firmly around her grandmother's martini glass, with Jim Almeida following behind, leaving just enough distance between them to convey his confidence in her balancing abilities, but not too much so as to preclude him from stepping in to rescue her, if need be.

A light, itchy sweat coated her brow, causing her curls to cling to her skin, but she resisted the urge to brush them away, remaining fully focused, instead, on keeping her feet moving steadily forward and her eyes glued tightly to the wobbling liquid.

"You're doing splendidly, darling," Amanda beamed with outstretched hands and misty eyes. Take away Riley's hair length, and replace the nightgown with Dr. Dentons, and it was like watching a slow-motion home movie of their son at the age of three.

The glass in her hands was cold; the tension in the room thick enough to slice.

"You're almost there," Tony softly encouraged her, holding his breath—mostly to keep himself from laughing—as Riley took her final step and, with the steadiness of a laser surgeon, passed the glass into her grandmother's hands. Taking a moment to ingest a few panting breaths of relief, she turned to her grandfather, whose quiet nod of proud approval drowned out all the other accolades around her.

"That's one impressive balancing talent you've got there, young lady," her grandfather complimented her as she accompanied him back to the chair and eagerly climbed into his lap, the ice now formally and officially broken.

She felt her head swoon from the intoxicating aroma of Old Spice: her second-most favorite scent in the world, next to the fragrance of her father's neck.

"So, tell me, have you ever visited the Alps?" her grandfather asked.

"Yeth," she replied, slightly stretching the truth.

"Well, y'know, while your grandmother and I were traveling through Austria, I recalled your mentioning that you liked elephants, and it reminded me of a great warrior named Hannibal, who once rode an elephant across the Alps…" he said, reaching inside his jacket pocket and producing a tiny charm bracelet, laden with clusters of gold elephants musically clinking against rows of mountains. "And, well, I just thought that you might enjoy this—May I?" he asked before gently clipping it to her wrist.

The surprise was unexpected, and the bracelet so beautiful, that it took her breath away. But before she could even begin to thank him, the triplets—adorned in the native dresses they'd haphazardly pulled over their nightgowns—had descended upon their grandfather, begging to know if anything was inside his jacket pocket for them. Not until after a baby pearl bracelet, with a golden initial to identify each, had been attached to their wrists did Riley exhale with joy and relief, realizing that her grandfather had selected the mesmerizing elephant bracelet especially and exclusively for her.

"Five minutes, people," Tony called out from the family room where he and Lou were firing up the DVD recorder in anticipation of Olivia's appearance. The five-minute call was fair warning for everyone to fight over seats before the show began, at which point forward there would be no talking.

Laura secured the coveted spot on the "L" side of the L-shaped couch where her parents stretched out with each other—shooting her father a guilt-inducing pout before climbing aboard, still not quite ready to forgive him for trying to gyp her earlier with those two measly dimes and a nickel—while Riley tucked herself into the couch's opposite corner, alongside her grandfather. Beside him sat GrandAmanda, her arms and lap monopolized by the two remaining sisters, which nothing on earth could've thrilled her more. Lastly, Lou got the ultra-cushy armchair, which was a-okay with him, as his back was still killing him from lugging in that damned steamer trunk.

"_Tonight_ on Larry King Live," the host's voice sing-sang over his jovial theme music, "our first guest—gracing the cover of Sports Illustrated for the third consecutive year—international supermodel and bestselling author Olivia Almeida, here to discuss her wildly popular new fashion manifesto, 'Orange: The New Blue'…"

"What's _he_ doing there!" Tony exploded at the top of lungs, the first to break his no-talking rule the instant the camera had widened to reveal Olivia—looking like the first million she'd ever made—with Gerald seated to her left, looking like…well, Gerald.

"He's her manager, darling," Amanda said.

"Her _gold-digger_ manager," Lou clarified, still choking on his beer at the sight of Gerald's suit, the price of which he didn't even want to imagine.

"_And_ her fiancé," Amanda firmly reminded them all, though with less than wholehearted joy and approval.

"And whose fault is _that_, Ma? Huh?" Tony reminded her back. "How many opportunities did Lou and I have to bust this thing up, with you foiling our efforts every time. Huh?"

Amanda Almeida sighed in quiet defeat. Perhaps her son was right. Perhaps she should've looked the other way, at some point or another, and allowed them to execute one of the many heinous ploys they had hatched up through the years. But that was all water under the bridge now. What was done was done. It was Olivia's life, and she adored the man, whom they, too, would all come to love someday; or, at the very least, become experts at faking it.

Tony quietly fumed for the full fifteen minutes of Olivia's segment, trying to comfort himself with the knowledge that all was not thoroughly lost; that the night was still young and just getting started. While the appearance of his Mom and Dad had fulfilled the second half of the big surprise, not even Michelle knew about the final, upcoming part. It was a birthday gift that he would bestow upon his Mom in just a short while, but one the entire family was going to love. Especially him.


End file.
